U&I

Warp;
2012

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LeilaArab's position as an outlier to the electronic music scene was firmly established through her 1998 debut, Like Weather. What's remarkable about that album is how cut adrift from the world it feels, with the London-based Iranian musician dragging a series of collaborators into a musical bubble that still now, some 14 years later, feels like a singular transmission from a unique talent. Much of it is eerily prescient; the curdled funk riff and stomach-churning lethargy of "Don't Fall Asleep" mirrors the kind of feeling the Weeknd have been dabbling in at the start of this decade. But, as is the case with many debut albums that set such a high bar, providing a second and third act for the stylistically assertive Like Weather proved problematic. On U&I she's taken a different tack, dumping the celebrity collaborators (Terry Hall, Martina Topley-Bird) of her 2008 record, Blood, Looms and Blooms, and even parting company with longtime singer Luca Santucci.

Instead, this album finds her working with the Berlin-based American DJ and musician Mt. Sims, who provides the only vocal contributions to U&I. There have been other changes, too. The scanty arrangements of yore, filled with crooked corners and dark cracks, have mostly been papered over. In their place comes a series of tracks that contain the most straightforward music Leila has produced to date, with vast strips of pulverizing industrial noise providing the combative spine that contorts awkwardly through this record. Even when she slows things down on U&I, there's a palpable feeling of ugliness; "In Consideration" is pitched somewhere between uneasy operatic trills and Throbbing Gristle-style discord; "In Motion Slow" contains the same kind of collapse-of-utopia glassiness as early Aphex Twin tracks such as "Heliosphan" and "Hedphelym".

In a sense, that's the biggest flaw with U&I-- it's too easy to feel out where Leila has been sourcing this material. Whereas before she was operating in a peculiar vacuum, now it feels like she's breathing in the same air as the rest of us. Some of the emotion has dissipated as well-- there's nothing as beautifully forlorn as the Donna Paul-sung Like Weather cut "Feeling" here. Instead, we get the end-of-the-world blood rush of instrumental tracks "Activate I" and "Eight", which butt up against the Mt. Sims-fronted material. The latter is often undercut by gnarled bass synth work, sometimes to stirring effect ("All of This") and at other times edging toward the pop-nihilism of Nine Inch Nails circa-"Head Like a Hole" ("Welcome To Your Life"). It's only when the darkness is vanquished, such as on the zesty "(Disappointed Cloud) Anyway" and the spidery echo of the title track, that it feels like the pair is gelling.

There isn't a singular focus to any of Leila's albums-- she works best when she seems to be confounding herself with her own ideas, all cooked up by indulging unlikely impulses and allowing a series of collaborators to make an imprint on her work. Strangely, pairing with just Mt. Sims on U&I appears to have resulted in less-focused output, with the duo gradually circling a grimy musical plughole, only managing to pull themselves out via less cluttered material in the back half of the record. It's the mystery and wonder of prior Leila albums that are diluted here. The sense of anatomizing her work and not being able to figure out why it all slots together so perfectly dissipates dramatically when you're being bludgeoned by the stentorian howl of "Welcome to Your Life". It's unlikely Leila will take a backward step from here, as she clearly never has in the past. But she could do a lot worse than digging out Luca Santucci's phone number next time out.